Machine readable indicia (“indicia”), such as barcodes, QR codes, etc., are labels containing coded information. Machine readable indicia are used in a wide variety of applications ranging from product traceability to product identification. Indicia can be printed by common printing technologies, which facilitates wide use and, at the same time, easy replication for counterfeiting purposes. For example, it is possible to replicate an indicia of an authentic product and attach the indicia over a counterfeited product. The issue of protection against counterfeit products is well known.
A number of anti-counterfeiting systems have been available. These conventional anti-counterfeiting systems typically use inks that are readable only through the use of being illuminated by a specific wavelength. For example, the ink may be visible when illuminated with an intense near-infrared light source radiation.
There are many aspects that must be considered when choosing a technology to be used for the construction of an anti-counterfeiting key. The quality of an anti-counterfeiting key has to be evaluated in close relation to the product that is to be protected. In particular, the cost of an anti-counterfeiting key should be a low percentage cost as compared to the price of the product, but at the same time, replication of the anti-counterfeiting key should represent a high percentage of cost to counterfeit the product.
There are two main considerations for developing a standardized anti-counterfeiting system, including:
1) costs of products: products that have to be protected by an anti-counterfeiting system typically include a wide range of price levels and manufacturing quantities. Product production quantities range from large-scale product production to limited run production. The anti-counterfeiting key should use a technology capable of responding flexibly to product pricing and different levels of production quantities. If the considered technology is not sufficiently flexible, then the anti-counterfeiting system may have a non-negligible percentage impact to the price of some product types, which would likely not be a commercially viable solution.
2) anti-counterfeiting key technology: the technology of the anti-counterfeiting key has to be able to evolve over time in order to better ensure a certain level of security. More specifically, an anti-counterfeiting key has to be created by a technology that is able to evolve features over time by using production processes that become increasingly complex. If the considered technology does not have the ability to evolve using new replication technologies, the investment needed to replicate the anti-counterfeiting key by counterfeiters may become lower over time, and, consequently, the value of the anti-counterfeiting protection will decrease.
Despite the inherent technological issues that are faced in creating an anti-counterfeiting technology, the need to protect products against counterfeiting is growing more and more. Such products that are well-known to be protected from counterfeiting range from medicine to clothing brands to airplane parts, just to name a few.
In order to make effective protection against counterfeiting, the anti-counterfeiting key should be created through methodologies or techniques not easily replicable by a would-be counterfeiter. Properties of an anti-counterfeiting system may include:
(i) an ability to read a code contained in an anti-counterfeiting key that is uniquely associated to a single product and possibly with difficulty to be accessed by the counterfeiter; and
(ii) the building of an equipment able to replicate anti-counterfeiting keys should represent a cost not advantageous compared to the profit obtainable from counterfeiting a product.
Based upon above-listed properties, the effectiveness of an anti-counterfeiting system generally depends on production volume of a product and the cost of a single product. Two illustrative extreme cases include (i) large-scale product production in terms of quantity with low cost of a single product, or (ii) low-scale product production in terms of quantity and with high cost of a single product.
In the first case, an anti-counterfeiting system may include the use of expensive anti-counterfeiting key manufacturing tooling because the cost of the tooling can be subdivided into a large number of products with the ability to produce keys fast because the manufacturing tooling has to manufacture many keys. In the second case, the cost of the tooling should not be cost prohibitive because the anti-counterfeiting keys have to be subdivided in only a few products, but, at the same time, the cost of the anti-counterfeiting keys can be higher given that the cost of a single product is high.
Until now, a number of efficient anti-counterfeiting systems for individual product type have been produced. Unfortunately, these anti-counterfeiting systems lose their effectiveness if used for other types of products with different production volumes and different cost of a single product. The development of anti-counterfeiting systems against counterfeiting are always very different and unrelated to each other, and such peculiarity has generally prevented the creation and development of a standard anti-counterfeiting system that is common to all product types, as described above.
Accordingly, there is a need to produce an anti-counterfeiting key using a technology that is cost-effective over a wide range of product prices and production rates along with a high-level of security that is not easily reproduced and has additional complexity that can be added. Moreover, there is a need to produce an anti-counterfeiting system that is cost-effective and can effectively read the anti-counterfeiting keys and be easily adapted to read keys that change over time to stay ahead of infringing products.